United States and India to Cooperate on Clean Energy Technologies

December 2, 2009

President Obama meets with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the Oval Office of the White House.Credit: Pete Souza, White House

President Barack Obama and India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a comprehensive Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on November 24 for their nations to work together to speed up the development and deployment of clean energy technology. Noting that energy security, food security, and climate change are interlinked, the leaders entered into a Green Partnership to meet these global challenges. Both leaders also affirmed that the outcome of the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen must be comprehensive.

Under the new MOU, the two nations will launch a Clean Energy and Climate Change Initiative, with the goal of improving technologies to make clean energy more affordable and efficient. The initiative will include cooperation in wind and solar energy, second-generation biofuels, and energy efficiency, as well as unconventional sources of natural gas and clean coal technologies, including carbon capture and storage. The two nations will also mobilize public and private resources to invest in clean energy projects in India. Further, the two nations began an Indo-U.S. Clean Energy Research and Deployment Initiative, supported by government and private-sector funds. The initiative will leverage expertise from both countries and may cover such topics as energy efficiency, sustainable transportation, second-generation biofuels, battery technology, the Smart Grid, solar energy, wind energy, and micro-hydropower. It will also include a Joint Research Center operating in both countries to accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies.

The United States and India also signed MOUs on solar and wind energy. Under the solar MOU, DOE's National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) will partner with India's Solar Energy Centre to create a comprehensive nationwide map of the solar potential in India. Also, more than two dozen U.S. and Indian cities will team up to jointly boost solar energy development. The wind MOU, between NREL and India's Centre for Wind Energy Technology, will focus on developing a low-speed wind turbine. See the White House press release and the Green Partnership Fact Sheet (PDF 81 KB). Download Adobe Reader.